The current hot biofuel is ethanol, but ethanol has some down sides. Now the biggest is that yeast can only ferment simple sugars, and the cheapest biomass money can buy is cellulose and unfermentable. However, that angle is largely being dealt with transgenic yeast, so I won't cover that asspect. The biggest problems that remain are that distillation of the ethanol, which uses lots of energy, and ethanol can’t be disturbed by pipeline, so it needs to be used close to the source to be practical. This means either locally grown grain must be used to produce the ethanol, but not every part of the country grows fermentable grain. This means the grain must be shipped however, if the Whiskey Rebellion taught us anything, it taught us that it is cheaper to ship the booze then it is to ship the grain. (Even in bulk carriers by train.) Thus it seems like good idea to find a way to solve both those problems in a single step, and that step is ethane or ethene. By engineering the yeast to either reduce the ethanol to ethane or dehydrate it to ethane, both of which are gases, continuous fermentation would become possible, since distillation wouldn't be required. Currently most ethanol production is batch or semi-batch since you want to get ethanol as high as possible to reduce the amount of distillation required, but the ethanol poisons the yeast. However, both ethane and ethane are gases, so they would bubble out of the fermentation tank, so they wouldn’t poison the yeast, so you just keep adding raw material and removing waste, at the process keeps going.
The collected ethane/ene can be compressed, and/or liquefied for pipeline transport using the existing natural gas infrastructure, to anywhere in the world. Once at the destination if ethanol is required product the ethane/ene gas can be converted using catalysts back to ethanol. Since the ethane can be co-minged with regular natural gas it can be stored underground, or used as feed stock for chemical production. Imagine the oxymoron and pun of "green" vinyl!
However, the more interesting prospect is using the ethane as bio-natural gas to fuel buses and fleet vehicles. Better yet for passanger cars, you have a hybrid car that was hybrid fuel too. Instead of carrying around 126 lbs of gasoline (with gasoline weighing 6 lbs a gallon and the car having a 21 gallon tank), you have 20 pounds of bio-ethane, just to make your daily commute, (bio-ethane is carbon neutral) and a 200 lb cylinder at home that charges your tank at night. That way if you need to drive long distance you can use regular gasoline, but most of the time the tank sits empty, and you burn a clean fuel.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Google Media
For anyone who is curious, Google owns the site that I am publishing too. Yes, Google owns Blogger, so I am in effect providing content, to one of if largest media organization in the world. BS you say? Google also owns YouTube, so it has both a print and video, news and entertainment component, if it had pod casts it would have radio, and therefore cover all three major types of media. Now if you look at the number of hits per day that Google run sites get, I am sure you’ll find it approaches the number of viewers that the major television networks get. However, the internet is worldwide and TV isn’t, so Google (and Yahoo) have a much larger potential audience then any other media outlet.
Now you might be thinking well TV-based internet failed miserable, but this is internet-based TV, and people are already use to staring at a monitor 8+ hours a data, so if staring at the monitor a couple more hours a day can entertain and inform too, then why not? Internet TV is on demand, so you can watch what you want when you want; no more timeslots that doom shows to failure. Plus, who has time for a half to full hour show anymore? Think of it, a 15 minute show that was on 4 times a week, you could watch them all at once or bit by bit as you got time.
A couple of suggestions for Google, since I already work for them (see above about my providing content). You (Google) should data mine your blog sites in semi-real time for people reporting potential news stories. If you are going to attract viewers you need to be able to provide novel content and not just rely on the AP. This requires in the field reporters, but since people on the ground in every city and town in the world are too expensive, you can just have them blog all the news and then pay people for the stories you decide to syndicate. (You’ll need to provide tools for them to this, but I’m sure you’ve got something in mind.) Furthermore, some stuff will be huge so you can use it as tip line and get professional news people involved when the situation calls for it.
The stuff you mine doesn’t even have to be news, because people love drama, and trust me I’ve read some blogs that are loaded with drama. I’m talking about the kind of stuff you can’t write. You’ve got a whole sitcom, soap opera engine writing scripts for you daily and all you’ve got to do is data mine it. Heck you data mine the YouTube videos for people who are good actors, (or news people) and live physically close, that you get together with a little cash and promise of internet fame, perhaps rent a community theater or open Google Studios in all the major metropolitan areas, throw in a script and you can start cranking out original content. The viewers select what they like by login on and you create hit shows for next to no money, by circumventing the whole movie/TV infrastructure.
Just remember when you start doing these kinds of things be sure you call it empowering the common people, cause if the anti-trust people start taking notice too early it will be harder to do this. Remember be very very careful in partnering with TIVO or one of the satellite TV companies, since if the traditional media figure out what you are trying to do, the anti-trust people will be the least of your worries.
Now you might be thinking well TV-based internet failed miserable, but this is internet-based TV, and people are already use to staring at a monitor 8+ hours a data, so if staring at the monitor a couple more hours a day can entertain and inform too, then why not? Internet TV is on demand, so you can watch what you want when you want; no more timeslots that doom shows to failure. Plus, who has time for a half to full hour show anymore? Think of it, a 15 minute show that was on 4 times a week, you could watch them all at once or bit by bit as you got time.
A couple of suggestions for Google, since I already work for them (see above about my providing content). You (Google) should data mine your blog sites in semi-real time for people reporting potential news stories. If you are going to attract viewers you need to be able to provide novel content and not just rely on the AP. This requires in the field reporters, but since people on the ground in every city and town in the world are too expensive, you can just have them blog all the news and then pay people for the stories you decide to syndicate. (You’ll need to provide tools for them to this, but I’m sure you’ve got something in mind.) Furthermore, some stuff will be huge so you can use it as tip line and get professional news people involved when the situation calls for it.
The stuff you mine doesn’t even have to be news, because people love drama, and trust me I’ve read some blogs that are loaded with drama. I’m talking about the kind of stuff you can’t write. You’ve got a whole sitcom, soap opera engine writing scripts for you daily and all you’ve got to do is data mine it. Heck you data mine the YouTube videos for people who are good actors, (or news people) and live physically close, that you get together with a little cash and promise of internet fame, perhaps rent a community theater or open Google Studios in all the major metropolitan areas, throw in a script and you can start cranking out original content. The viewers select what they like by login on and you create hit shows for next to no money, by circumventing the whole movie/TV infrastructure.
Just remember when you start doing these kinds of things be sure you call it empowering the common people, cause if the anti-trust people start taking notice too early it will be harder to do this. Remember be very very careful in partnering with TIVO or one of the satellite TV companies, since if the traditional media figure out what you are trying to do, the anti-trust people will be the least of your worries.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Google OS?
Ok this might be old news to many people but to some this is news, so don’t email me about it, if it isn't news to you!
The people that Microsoft needs to worry about aren’t Apple or anti-trust lawyers, it is Google. MS makes most of its money not on its OS’s but on other products like Office and the database products. If you haven’t noticed Google has a whole set of productivity tools, browser objects, OS add-ons, email, etc. If Google bought Open Office, and partnered with Firefox, they could put out a serious competitor to MS Office/IE.
Then how much longer do you think it would be until Google put out a Linux-based OS with native support for Google tools? People would eat that up, sure it wouldn’t hurt MS’s OS sales very much at first. However, if Linux became easy to use, and Google could ensure a revenue stream by linking you out to a webpage with ads when you typed a sentence in Google Documents, and that paid for development, it could start to eat away at MS’s profits. Worse because MS products don’t work well on Linux systems, (if at all), MS couldn’t compete. There’s more!
When Google really wants to hurt MS, it will start developing database products. If Google had a product that could take away to the Access market and some of the SQL market from MS, that would really really hurt. Now is Google gunning for MS? Yes! Does Google want to be in the database area? Who knows. I am just a guy who posts stuff to the web.
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